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Numerous types of hearing aids are known and have been developed to assist individuals with hearing loss. Examples of hearing aid types currently available include behind the ear (BTE), in the ear (ITE), in the canal (ITC) and completely in the canal (CIC) hearing aids. In many situations, however, hearing impaired individuals may require a hearing solution beyond that which can be provided by such a hearing aid alone. For example, hearing impaired individuals often have great difficulty carrying on normal conversations in noisy environments, such as parties, meetings, sporting events or the like, involving a high level of background noise. In addition, hearing impaired individuals also often have difficulty listening to audio sources located at a distance from the individual, or to several audio sources located at various distances from the individual and at various positions relative to the individual.
Many objects, aspects and variations of the present invention will become apparent to one of skill in the art upon review of the prior art and in light of the teachings herein.
These and other problems experienced by hearing impaired individuals are addressed by the system and method of the present invention. The system of the present invention includes a secondary transducer or microphone (or other type of secondary audio source) that acts as an alternative to the primary transducer or microphone in the hearing aid itself. Signals received at the secondary audio source can be transmitted, preferably wirelessly, to the hearing aid as a secondary input.
Examples of secondary audio sources include various forms of head-worn or hand-held directional microphones used by the heavily impaired individual (e.g., an array microphone), audio entertainment systems, telephones, and body-worn microphone transmission systems used by third party talkers (e.g., a microphone worn by friends, companions, colleagues, etc. of the hearing impaired individual).
In order to make such a secondary audio source system easier and more practical to use, however, it is desirable to have a hearing aid system that senses the presence of a desired transmission from the secondary audio source, and that automatically switches from the primary audio source of the hearing aid to the signal being transmitted by the secondary audio source. In other words, the hearing aid system selects either the primary or secondary audio source for transmission into the ear canal of a hearing aid wearer. Such switching or selection may be based on an analysis of the incoming signal from the secondary audio source. For example, the system may switch to or select the secondary audio source if the incoming signal is greater that a predetermined threshold. In either case, when the system switches to the secondary audio source, the primary audio source may be completely switched off, or may instead be simply attenuated by the system.
These and other advantages and novel features of the present invention, as well as details of an illustrated embodiment thereof, will be more fully understood from the following detailed description, drawings and claims.